This is the story about how CloudShare reduced UI Automation code by over 50% while greatly increasing
overall test coverage with Applitools Eyes automated visual UI testing.

About CloudShare's Test Automation Infrastructure

CloudShare uses Production environments to host and run all test environments (for testing both Production
and local development labs). This includes machines from most modern Windows operating systems, and with all
browsers combinations supported (Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer 9+).

CloudShare's automated tests are executed with each local deployment (which happens several times each day),
with each Production deployment (every Sunday). In addition, full regression cycles executed nightly and
throughout the weekend.

With the previous testing tool used, CloudShare was limited to Internet Explorer, which caused them to miss
a large number of bugs that only showed up on other browsers. With Applitools Eyes, this is no longer an
issue, as the automated visual UI testing solution validates the app visual & functional correctness across all
browsers, devices, screen resolutions and operating systems. CloudShare now tests in a variety of screen
resolutions, which allows them to ensure the UI looks right – across the board.

An important capability CloudShare finds extremely useful is the ability to test pages with dynamic content
and layout, and to easily maintain those tests. Dynamic Region Labelling allows to label
any regions to ignore (useful where animated gifs are running, or where dynamic data is placed), or define
floating regions on a page; these capabilities allow CloudShare to ignore dynamic regions on any page, and
build robust tests that effectively compare pages with dynamic content and layout, without failing due to
insignificant pixel variations.

Another capability that allowed CloudShare to further optimize its testing efforts is change
propagation (i.e. perceiving the app as a whole, and not as random unrelated pages): when a new
change affects multiple app pages in a similar fashion (e.g. change in header or navigation bar), CloudShare
only needs to review and accept this change for a single occurrence, and Applitools Eyes automatically
propagates and approves similar changes in related pages.

Results

Over 50% reduction of UI automation code

Improvement of overall number of bugs caught pre-release

Greater automated UI coverage

Easier, shorter maintenance

Peace of mind with each new release and update, knowing the all of the app's visual elements across
multiple browsers and various resolutions – are validated and regression-free

Following the addition of Applitools Eyes Automated Visual UI Testing Solution to CloudShare's Test Automation
infrastructure, the majority of UI validation is now handled using screenshot comparison. This substantially
reduced the amount of automation code, while increasing browser & resolution coverage, overall test
reliability and significantly lowering time spent on code maintenance.

Summary

With Applitools Eyes, CloudShare managed to save quite a bit of time and effort on writing and maintaining
automation code, and the implementation of Automated Visual UI Testing has allowed them to achieve greater
automated UI coverage. Applitools Eyes helps CloudShare to quickly and automatically detect many UI
appearance & layout issues, and functional issues – and address them pre-release. As a result, CloudShare
reduced the overall number of missed bugs and substantially improved product quality and user
experience.